Climate change has become a global issue and affects various regions at different levels. The hydro-climatic conditions and the natural fragility of Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) make it prone to floods. The review was intended to comprehensively explore the determinants of floods in the continent and their effects on public health.
The review revealed that the frequency and intensity of precipitations have increased in recent decades in SSA. This is worsened by anthropogenic activities including urban sprawl, population growth, and land use changes. The health effects of floods are diverse, varied, and specific to a particular context which can be immediate and long-term. The economic losses due to the flood events in the continent are huge.
It is high time Governments across the continent need to give flood management a top priority as part of national disaster preparedness, response, and mitigation. Floods cannot be managed in isolation; it has to be incorporated into national urban planning with urbanization to make cities resilient and sustainable.
For instance the 54 nations states that make up the African continent are complexly diverse in geography and climatic conditions from the equatorial, Sahel to the desert. Rainfall and river flows in Africa show high levels of variability across a range of spatial and temporal scales.1-3 The continent also has large numbers of river basins that account for the significant total run-off. Flooding is the leading natural environmental disaster worldwide and one of the major challenges faced by countries in the 21st century.4-6In Kenya, flooding has emerged as the most common meteorological disaster.7Worldwide, floods have increased both in terms of frequency and intensity thereby causing significant environmental destruction, impacts on economies and human activities.
Flooding poses serious socio-economic challenges, each year, flooding claims about 20,000 lives and adversely affect approximately 20 million people globally.6,7 Torrential rains and flooding affected 600,000 people in 16 West African countries in September 2007. The worst-hit countries were Burkina Faso, Ghana, Senegal, and Niger. This event was closely followed by the 2007 floods that displaced more than a million people in Uganda, Ethiopia, Sudan, Burkina Faso, Togo, Mali, and Niger and claimed over 500 lives.
The report of EM-DAT database revealed that floods alone accounted for 38.7% of all incidents, 6.2% of deaths and 43.0% of the population affected by all disaster caused by natural hazards in the world during 2000-2009.13Floods are the most frequent environmental disasters affecting over 2.8 billion people globally and causing over 200, 000 deaths over the past decades.14 Between 1995-2005, the lives of 2.3 billion people were affected by floods, making it account for 47.0% of all weather-related disasters worldwide.15,16 Flooding is not
a new occurrence in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). Flooding has been reported in the city of Lagos, Nigeria since 1947, and that was described as widespread and is now an annually recurring event.
In the past decade, across sub-Saharan Africa, floods have surged in intensity. The 2018-2019 southwest. Indian Ocean cyclone season resulted in a level flood of damage previously unseen in Africa.18 The resulting cyclone Idai caused devastating flood damage in Mozambique and Zimbabwe with 602 deaths and 299 fatalities respectively and damage to critical infrastructure worth about $1 billion.3,19 In 2012, 33 of the 36 States of Nigeria were affected by floods with 37 million affected, 2.1 million people displaced, 363 people killed and more than 18,200 injured, and more than 18, 000 houses were damaged or destroyed.20
In April 2022 alone, there were reports of at least 8 serious flooding events and twenty deaths in Nigeria and Ghana despite the fact that attention was largely overshadowed by the COVID-19 pandemic.21 Globally, floods are described in a number of ways depending on location (land surface, hydrology, geomorphology, and duration). Flooding, signifying the consequence of a flood is distinct from the flood itself which is defined as the condition that occurs when water overflows its natural or artificial confines of a stream, river, or other body of water or accumulates by drainage over low-lying areas.22,23 Since the “long rains” season started in
March 2020, more than 13 million people have been affected by flooding in East Africa with about 981,000 displaced.24 During the same period, 200 people were reported dead as a result of overflowing rivers and mudslides in Kenya with over 40,000 displaced. For the first time since records began 120 years ago, water levels of Lake Victoria reached the highest point, displacing thousands of people, and flooding homes, with the destruction of infrastructure and roads.
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Thus, flooding is the most common environmental natural disaster ravaging the SSA and a threat to achieving sustainable development with the continent’s current level of development. The aim of the review is to assess the trends of flooding events and the impacts of floods on the health of the human population in SSA. Its objectives are to describe the causes of floods, flood types, what are its drivers (determinants), and finally describe the health impacts of floods. This study is an analysis of literature and published reports including grey literature, technical reports, and journal articles. A search was conducted on health databases-
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